One method of Black participation in the Republican Party at the time included involvement in the "Union Leagues," Republican political organizations formed in the South in 1867 during the Reconstruction Era to promote Black political activity and civil rights (named after the organizations of the same name formed in the North during the Civil War to promote activity in favor of the Union).
In 1866, The Old Guard magazine accused the Democrats of using force and fraud to gain and retain power, and representing "but a despised faction of the American people".
[4] In the 1890s, the New Orleans Times-Picayune published editorials in favor of disenfranchisement of Negroes on the basis that they were "unfit to vote, ignorant, shiftless, depraved and criminal-minded", and would be controlled by a "ring" of white politicians.
[5] In his 1920 book Children of the Slaves, the British author Stephen Graham mentions that in New Orleans the Negro Republican Party could not count for much in votes.
[6] African American males were allowed some voting rights in Alabama until 1901, when the state functionally disenfranchised them although still technically letting them register.